KFC’s Double Down Sandwich | Update | A.V. Club “God clearly did not mean for humans to eat chicken, bacon, and low-quality, gelatinous cheese at the same time. I was suddenly struck with a strange urge to keep kosher. Each bite became a grueling endurance test, as the cheese and grease began to override the… Continue reading Links for 2009-09-17
Month: September 2009
Dorky Poll: What Color Is Your Calculator?
Prompted by a discussion in another channel, a question for you all: What is your preferred type of calculator? That is, when you’re doing some sort of problem involving math, and reach for a calculator, what do you reach for? What Kind of Calculator Do You Use?(survey software) I think I may have used this… Continue reading Dorky Poll: What Color Is Your Calculator?
The Meta-Meeting, and Other Horrors of Committee Service
Alternate title: Notes Toward a Taxonomy of Bad Meetings. The Meta-Meeting: Your organization faces problems X, Y, and Z. Therefore, you are planning an all-day workshop on addressing X, Y, and Z. Your mission, should you choose to accept it: To have a meeting about how to organize the workshop to address X, Y, and… Continue reading The Meta-Meeting, and Other Horrors of Committee Service
Links for 2009-09-16
Infinite Summer » Blog Archive » Sincerely Yours, David Foster Wallace “[F]rom where I now stand-9/10ths of the way through and surveying the path I have trod thus far-it now seems obvious to me what the book is “about”. Infinite Jest is a novel about sincerity.107 The question now becomes: why does it take so… Continue reading Links for 2009-09-16
Stupid Technical Question: “Mass Insertion”
In reading a theoretical paper on electric dipole moments (well, OK, skimming through it looking for numbers), I ran across several Feynman diagrams with an “X” on one of the particle arrows. The caption contains the presumably-intended-to-be-helpful note “The cross denotes a mass insertion.” I have no idea what that means, and neither does the… Continue reading Stupid Technical Question: “Mass Insertion”
Schrödinger’s Virus?
The ArXiV Blog and several other sources last week linked to a new paper titled Towards Quantum Superposition of Living Organisms: The most striking feature of quantum mechanics is the existence of superposition states, where an object appears to be in different situations at the same time. Up to now, the existence of such states… Continue reading Schrödinger’s Virus?
Dorky Poll: Halogens
We’ll keep up the chemical theme that we’ve been following lately with another Dorky Poll to pass the time while I’m in lab all morning. We’re not going to do all of the columns of the periodic table (does anybody really have a favorite transition metal?), but a couple more demand opinions. So, what’s your… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Halogens
Links for 2009-09-15
Fafblog! the whole world’s only source for Fafblog. “”Giblets is detached,” says Giblets. “Where is the warmth of the heart of the fiery fires of the human experience? Giblets demands more feeling!” “And though their love was deep and fierce and right and true it was doomed from the start,” says me, “for she was… Continue reading Links for 2009-09-15
Robert Charles Wilson, Julian Comstock [Library of Babel]
Over at the Science and Entertainment Exchange, they have a nice post about the Darwin movie, which also appears in today’s Links Dump, with John Scalzi addressing the putative controversy about the movie’s distribution. John’s suggestion for how to attract major US distribution– Will Smith, explosions, and Jennifer Connelly’s breasts– reminded me of The Life… Continue reading Robert Charles Wilson, Julian Comstock [Library of Babel]
The Speed of God
Over in Twitter-land, Eric Weinstein is visiting the AMNH at the same time as a bunch of Orthodox Jews, and takes the opportunity for a little Q&A: Me: Excuse me, but how is the phylogenetic tree reconciled with Torah. Modern Orthodox Man: Lorentzian time dilation. It’s a head hurter. This is an interesting attempt to… Continue reading The Speed of God